Look back(6) The Blast Theory

------ What is the Blast Theory?

From my perspective, it is a group of artists who have the creativity in actions and do some rule-breaking actions. 

1.

Gun man kill three (1991)

Blast Theory's first work was made over the sumer of 1991 by Matt Adams, Lorraine Hall, Niki Jewett, Will Kittow and Ju Row Farr in collaboration with Lucia Gahlin, Nicky Gibbs and Bruce Gilchrist. The development of the piece was prompted by an article in The Guardian entitled Gunmen Kill Three at Mobile Shop which described in detail how two men entered a mobile shop in a republican area and killed the two women behind the counter and a man who tried to intervene. Throughout the sequence of events the only words reported to be spoken was “IRA”. This was said by the protestant killers to reassure the two women moments before shooting them.

The resulting work was a promenade performance first shown at Union Chapel in London in September 1991 alongside DJs, an installation in gold leaf and a bar run by the artists. It was subsequently shown at Sheffield Independent Film as part of the Sheffield Media Show and at Bournemouth Polytechnic.

Structured around a re-enactment of the mobile shop killing, the piece featured live drumming, live wireless video projections, a sweep of the floor for evidence and an appeal for a missing child. A member of the audience was handed a paintball gun and offered the opportunity to fire at two performers in their underwear. If they chose to go ahead they were given three shots to make a hit. The piece ended with a monologue taken from Life After Life by Tony Parker in which a man describes bludgeoning someone to death with a hammer.

2.

                                                            Something American (1996)

On a stage 12m wide and 2m deep stands a bulky middle aged man in a New York cop's uniform. In a crisp American accent he speaks about the thrill of the force and his sexual fantasies. He even shows us his five favourite explosions.

This is a man at ease with himself.

Behind him a panoramic screen starts to flicker into life. Slide and video projections of cartoons, headlines and vast American landscapes spread right across the stage. Layers of icons, footnotes and speech bubbles build up into a constantly mutating electronic billboard.

As Something American develops, the cop sheds his layers of pretence. He opens up, breaks down and falls away. As he does so other versions of America come through; sometimes in tiny moments, at others in a flurry of activity and pumping music. Three performers talk about boxing and Rock'n'Roll and Remote Viewing. Then the talking stops and the UFOs arrive.

Punctuated by loops and samples from Sugarboat the show looks at what America represents for us through the eyes of one man. For him, and maybe for us, it is an endless landscape of hope and violence.

Something American won the Barclays New Stages Award in 1996 and toured the UK and Germany.

3.

                                                                     I like Frank (2004)

In March 2004 Blast Theory premiered the world's first 3G mixed reality game, I Like Frank in Adelaide, at the Adelaide Fringe.

I Like Frank took place online at www.ilikefrank.com and on the streets using 3G phones. Players in the real city chatted with players in the virtual city as they searched for the elusive Frank. Whether playing on the streets or logging from around the world, players built relationships, swapped information and tested the possibilities of a new hybrid space.

The game invited players to search for Frank through the streets of Adelaide. Online Players moved through a virtual model of the city, opening location specific photos of the city. One photo revealed the location of a hidden object. Online Players then had to enlist a Street Player to go to that location and retrieve it. In the Exeter Hotel, in a pool hall and in saddle bags on bicycles were four different postcards each with a question for the Street Player to answer such as, 'Who do you think of when you feel alone?'Once an Online Player had achieved this they entered a new virtual Adelaide saturated in red where Frank was waiting in a photographic 'Future Land'.

Street Players received messages onto their phones that reveal that the creator of the game and Frank spent time together in Adelaide in the past. By walking through the north eastern part of the city Street Players followed in their footsteps. The game culminated with an interaction with a glimpsed figure at 'Future Land', a leafy sunken atrium between four mirrored office blocks. Via a video call on their phone they were invited to answer the question on their postcard and address it to an online player.

 I Like Frank in Adelaide was produced during Blast Theory's appointment as Adelaide Thinkers in Residence for 12 weeks; an annual programme which brings world-leading thinkers to live and work in Adelaide. Programme partners included the Dept. of the Premier and Cabinet, Adelaide Fringe 2004, m.Net, SA Film Corporation, Australian Network for Art & Technology and Dept. of Education and Children's Services, with support from Internode, the Arts & Humanities Research Board, Australia Council for the Arts, Technology School of the Future, Australian Film Commission, Arts SA and Dept. of Further Education, Employment, Science and Technology.

Three members of Blast Theory and two members of the Mixed reality Lab spent 3 months in Adelaide working with five local artists and scientists (Bianca Barling, Brian Degger, Anne Marie Kohn, Justin McGuinness and Aaron Stafford) to create I Like Frank.

------ My feelings after seeing the Blast theory pieces

   I chose these three pieces of blast theory in order to compare the blast theory works in different period. Obviously, the works of different times have very different styles. In the early times, their focus was on some incident (or news) happened at that time. Just like the Gunman killed three, they put the incident on the stage to show to the audience. Different from other stage works, they involved the audiences, they can be part of the play so that they can truly get the emotion of it. 

  Things got a little bit different in the piece of 'something American', we can see that they add different kinds of acting method, such as dancing, media and some background effects. Also, from my point of view, their perspective became wider. They didn't focus on some small incidents, instead, some social phenomenon  was high-lighted in their works. 

  Finally comes the ' I like Frank', to be honest, I really think the recent blast theory works are very cool! They involve so many people, the strangers have to try to communicate with each other in order to achieve the same goal. I even hope that I can participate in one of the event some day. Seeing the recent works, we can easily relate the blast theory with the situationist international ----- 'the liberation of the games'. The SI regarded the game as a different style of work. The blast theory also emphasized on the games. They used it to connect people, to break the rules, to let us see a very different world.